Chimera
by Artifuss
Summary: Daniel wishes to help an old friend. This is the Gen version of this story, there is a bit longer Slash version on my personal site.


Title: Chimera  
Author: Artifuss  
  
Summary: An episode tag to Chimera. Daniel wants to help an old friend.  
Rating: PG13  
Spoilers: Chimera, The Curse  
Category: Angst  
  
Archive: Sure, if you really want to, just email me first.  
Disclaimer: As much as I do enjoy dreaming so, the characters of Stargate do not belong to me in any way, shape or form. If I did have such access, you wouldn't be reading this in the first place.  
Warning: None  
Author's Note: This fic was written for Ximeria, as part of the ficathon on LiveJournal's JackSlashDaniel community. Many, many thanks, hugs, and Hagen-Daaz to Bria for the wonderful betaing. :) Any mistakes found are mine. 

* * *

"I'm sorry, I don't remember."  
  
"Now, Ms. Gardner–"  
  
"That's Dr. Gardner. She held a PhD in Anthropology before she was kidnapped, and she still holds that title today."  
  
"Daniel, it's all right."  
  
"No, it's not." _They're not treating you as a person._  
  
It was ridiculous. Nearly right from the start, the NID had been treating Sarah as the enemy. From Daniel's point of view, Sarah had already given them valuable information. In one of their more personal discussions over tea, she had explained to him how it's true that the host survives the intrusion, but the Goa'uld parasite within is still capable of determining how much it'll allow its host to see. A strong Goa'uld has total control over the body and mind of the one it enslaves, including the host's long and short term memory. Simply put, a flick of a switch is all that is required for those memory banks to be entirely closed off. Without the connection, nothing that occurs during that time could be remembered by the host.  
  
They discussed how this trick would be particularly useful if the parasite was planning to jump from one host to another within a short time frame, should it still want to use the prior host as a slave after the transference. It's an excellent brainwashing technique, especially if your host came from a world that still worshipped you or one of your kind as their God. Feed the impressionable mind only what you wish it to see and you'll have a faithful servant till the end of his or her life.  
  
"Dr. Jackson, I must insist that you cease these interruptions."  
  
"And I must insist that you start treating her as a civilian of Earth and not as a Goa'uld!"  
  
They were in the basement of Area 51, encased by four bland walls, with glaring florescent lighting above, and a thick metal door. In other words, they were sitting in the USAF's idea of the ultimate interrogation room. And with the NID involved, they had this 'interview' right down to the good guy/bad guy routine. If he wasn't finding the questions they were throwing in Sarah's direction obnoxious at best, he probably would have found the setup laughable. Both Sarah and Daniel were sitting together at one corner of a short table, with the two agents on the opposite side. One was leaning against the wall, with his hands thoroughly stuffed inside his pockets. The other was standing tall, so close to the table that his thighs were brushing against it, most likely in an attempt to look over-bearing. It wasn't working though.  
  
The one asking the questions today was Agent Maynard. The man was six feet tall, somewhat built, with green eyes and medium brown hair. In some circles, he would probably be even described as handsome. This was a conspicuous contrast to his partner Agent Thompson, who was the one leaning against the wall. He was a pug-ish looking man of five feet and maybe four inches, brown eyes and noticeably greasy, thinning hair.  
  
It's been a little over a week since the Tok'ra had been able to remove Osiris from Sarah's body. After only two days of rest in the SGC's infirmary, the NID were given signed documents from the President to take her to Area 51 for investigation. They considered her to be a security threat but also a valuable tool against the Goa'uld. Osiris was Anubis' right hand man – uh, woman, and the military and civilian operations alike were salivating at the idea of having access to this particular System Lord's plans, as well as hoping to gain knowledge of his available technology.  
  
There was one small problem to their effort of getting one over Anubis. Sarah didn't remember much of anything from her time as Osiris' host. She remembered when Osiris had first taken her. She'd been incapable of fighting against the parasite as it killed her mentor, colleagues, and nearly her friends with the use of her own hands. She couldn't stop the alien, the same being whom she had once studied in great detail and had admired as the first Pharaoh of Egypt, from accessing her memories, taking on her personality to fool those she had known and loved, and quickly absorbing everything that she had learned and understood.  
  
"Agent Maynard, I don't remember anything that happened after we escaped Earth. I must admit that I was a little surprised when Dr. Jackson told me that we'd been in space for nearly three years now."  
  
"What's with the 'we,' Doctor?" Maynard asked leaning over the table. His hands were fisted against the table top, a slight smile pasted on his face, as he hoped that he finally caught Gardner in a trap. She wasn't fully cooperating, he could tell.  
  
"Osiris and I would make a 'we'. Or would you have rather prefer I said, 'Once I escaped'?"  
  
Daniel had to bend his head and smirk at that question, as Sarah was never one to be bullied. These agents had nothing over the malevolent professors and students alike that one could encounter in academia. In fact, Sarah was one that a good number of colleagues had feared to face, let alone try to disrespect. It was a quality that Dr. Jordan had admired in her right from the beginning. It was probably the very same trait that had him killed. Sarah had to have been very curious to see what was inside that canopic jar, and Dr. Jordan would never have been able to sway her from proceeding. And Daniel wasn't there when they both needed him most.  
  
As one of the very few to be undaunted by Gardner's attitude, Maynard tried a different route to find what he was looking for. "During the first week then, what did you learn from Osiris?"  
  
"I didn't learn anything. Osiris gave me a few images, showing me who he really was. But other than that, he ignored me mostly. Unless he needed an answer that I would know, and even then he wouldn't ask. He would just take."  
  
"Osiris is a 'he'?" Maynard was grasping at straws, but he needed to question everything she said. This woman would trip somehow, he knew it.  
  
"Osiris normally took male hosts. From what little information Osiris imparted to me, I was the first one he had chosen from the female gender. You have to understand that I had studied the legends of Osiris quite thoroughly. The texts always referred to Osiris as a Pharaoh, a king. The term 'king' is generally given to the appointed head male descendant of a royal lineage, and to further add to the fact, this king in question also had a queen. Her name is, Isis."  
  
"I know who Isis was, Dr. Gardner." An emotion had flitted over Sarah's eyes, but Daniel couldn't figure out what it meant exactly. They hadn't talked about Isis yet, but that couldn't explain the quick look of disappointment that shone for a mere second. He was sure that Maynard didn't miss the look either as he had told Sarah the fate of Osiris' mate. It had to have been something else, though. Of course she didn't know of Isis' fate. Osiris must have assumed that his Queen was locked away in a stasis jar when he had left the planet. But that couldn't explain the look, and Daniel had made a note to ask her… later.  
  
Sarah continued her short lecture as if Maynard hadn't interrupted her though, "And since queens are specific for the female gender, as Isis' hosts were, I will therefore refer to Osiris as male. Although from what I understand the Goa'uld are genderless, but they do seem to have a sexual preference."  
  
"Fine. According to NORAD, Osiris left Earth by a small space craft."  
  
"Yes, it was hiding in a dune near his altar."  
  
"Are there any other ships buried in the sands of Egypt?" A team under the guidance of the SGC had scanned the area by air, with newly equipped Naquadah scanners. They had found nothing, but that didn't mean there was nothing to find.  
  
A knock at the door interrupted Sarah's answer. Maynard looked at his partner, indicating by a curt nod of his head that Thompson should go answer it. And Thompson did, letting an airman inside their small room.  
  
"There's a phone call for Dr. Jackson, sir." All eyes fell on Daniel with the news.  
  
"Who is it?" Daniel asked.  
  
"Colonel O'Neill, sir." _Why would he be calling now?_ He knew that this was the allotted time for the NID to interrogate Sarah for the day. It had been the same time everyday, for the past four days. And he also knew that Daniel had to be there with her. Daniel had to make sure that they wouldn't harm her in any way. He wasn't there to stop her from opening that jar in the first place, but he'd be damned if he wasn't going to be there for her now.  
  
Looking towards Sarah, her posture not giving anything away of whether his leaving would affect her somehow, he said, "Tell him that I'll give him a call back once we're finished here."  
  
"He says it's urgent, sir. That if you wouldn't willingly go that I should drag your… um, y-your butt to the conference room." _Right._ Jack would never say the word, 'butt' unless the words 'little grey' were said just before.  
  
He could hear Thompson snort at the Colonel's command.  
  
Sarah gave him a look, telling him that she was strong, that she didn't need him there, "I'll be fine, Daniel. It's okay."  
  
It wasn't though. This was the last place that she should ever be. Daniel sighed, and gave a quick nod to Sarah as he got up and left the cramped room, following the airman to the conference room.  
  
Daniel and Airman… Mason, as he had noted the identification tag read, took an elevator up three floors to where the communication rooms were held. When the doors opened, Daniel headed out, but Mason had stayed within. The airman held the door open long enough to say,  
  
"It's the third door to your left, Doctor."  
  
"Thank you," said Daniel, to a closed elevator door. He turned around and walked the three doors down, opening the one that was on his left. He was surprised to find, not a phone placed on hold, but Jack, Sam, Teal'c and Yar'an, a Tok'ra scientist, inside the room.  
  
"Jack?"  
  
"She's not who you think she is, Daniel."  
  
_No pleasantries, Jack?_ "Oh, come on! Not you too! Wait, –" he had a feeling that he was going to need to sit down for this, and thus made his way to the conference table and sat down.  
  
"What? Why are you saying this now? What changed your mind? I'm ready, so spill it!" Jack sat down across from Daniel, the rest of SG-1 and the Tok'ra following suit. Daniel really felt outnumbered now, with the four to one odds.  
  
For every night he spent lying in his bed, in some motel room in Nevada, he would talk to Jack about all the injustices committed while attempting to get information out of Sarah. And Jack would give him a few pointers on what to expect next, even though after six or seven years with the SGC, Daniel already knew a fair deal about NID interrogation techniques. Jack was supposed to be on his side. So, what the hell happened?  
  
"Daniel!"  
  
"What?" If Jack thought he was going to take this stab in the back calmly, he was sorely mistaken.  
  
"Daniel," Sam tried to speak with reason. It was always hit or miss with her and her ability to placate him. Sometimes, what she had to say came out a little condescending, and this turned out to be one of those times. "Sarah has been gone for years. You knew she wouldn't be the same when we got her back."  
  
"That doesn't mean that she should be treated no better than a Goa'uld, Sam." They'd been through all the scenarios so many times while sitting by innumerable campfires on their quiet off-world missions. Sarah's capture was one of Daniel's failures, his team knew that. And they also knew that he would do anything to make her new life on Earth as comfortable as possible.  
  
"What are you doing here, Yar'an?" The Tok'ra scientist, the one responsible for removing Osiris, was fidgeting while he sat there. It never crossed Daniel's mind that a Tok'ra could actually fidget. It was unnerving to watch.  
  
"The Tok'ra withheld information about the extraction procedure, DanielJackson." If nothing else, getting right to the point was something that Daniel could always rely on Teal'c for.  
  
"What do you mean? Jack? What are you guys trying to say?"  
  
Jack looked at him straight in the eye, demanding that Daniel would hear him out and take what he was about to say as the absolute truth it was supposed to be, "She's still Osiris, Daniel."  
  
"The Tok'ra said that they had successfully removed the Goa'uld."  
  
"They did."  
  
"Then she's not Osiris."  
  
"No. She still is."  
  
He blew out a deep breath in exasperation, "Alright, Jack. Explain to me how Osiris is still there inside Sarah, while the snake is living on some other planet."  
  
"It is not."  
  
_What?_ "What?"  
  
"Teal'c –" Jack had lifted his hand, indicating to Teal'c that he shouldn't have mentioned this yet.  
  
"No. Teal'c?" Daniel asked, his attention entirely focused on his brother, "What do you mean it's not? The Tok'ra wouldn't have brought the symbiote back. Would they?" But Teal'c wouldn't answer; instead he glared at Jack, as he was unwilling to explain his statement further.  
  
"Yarn over here," Jack said as he pointed over to the Tok'ra, "gated to Earth this morning, Daniel. He had more information about the procedure. Well, you know how they are. Not once have they been able to give us the full story right away. None of us should be all that surprised that this time isn't any different."  
  
"What are you talking about, Jack?" He wasn't going to like this. All his hard work to get Sarah back into the life she once knew would be for nothing, he could already feel it.  
  
"Apparently, Osiris died before they extracted her… him… it… whatever you want to call that snake, from Dr. Gardner." _Dr. Gardner?_ Of all things, here was Jack trying to be objective. Oh, this wasn't good.  
  
"So what does that mean? The Goa'uld died. Sarah was already free, so what's the problem?"  
  
"The problem is that this didn't turn out to be a normal extraction procedure." Yar'an decided to explain, "I had found the symbiote linked along the cerebral cortex, which is not something that we had encountered before. Normally a symbiote would integrate along the brain stem." Daniel looked back to Jack for a re-iteration. Out of the three of his friends… his family, Jack would have the easiest answer to understand.  
  
"Osiris' teeth… for lack of a better term, were lodged around Sarah's brain. The wounds that it had made were repairable by a hand device, once Yar'an was in there. The symbiote was already decomposing when he had tried to take it out. Which explains why Janet found Naquadah in her blood work, Daniel." Jack looked over to the scientist, receiving affirmation that he did well in explaining what happened.  
  
"So what does all of this mean?" The Tauri had assumed that Osiris had lived through the procedure. That it would be kept in stasis till they could figure out a way to interrogate it without any chance of it escaping. The Tok'ra hadn't said a word about this before, and he was anxious to get Sarah back on track.  
  
"It means that Osiris figured out a way to not only transfer ideas, but to transfer… its… entire consciousness into the host. That's not Dr. Gardner down there. That's Osiris."  
  
_No._ "No, it's not possible." He wouldn't believe it. How could that happen? "I've spent the past week speaking with Sarah, not Osiris." _She couldn't fool me like that again.  
_  
"When Osiris couldn't make his escape from your room, Daniel, he probably realized that there wasn't a way out for him. He figured out a way to survive." Sam wanted him to understand. She wanted him to know that they were all there for him. That she was there for him. He smiled slightly, acknowledging that he understood what her eyes were trying to convey. They were good at relaying their feelings by simple gestures.  
  
"Is it possible?" He asked Jack. Jack wouldn't screw him with this, not unless he was absolutely sure about it himself.  
  
"It happened, Daniel. I'm sorry." Jack's placating tone shocked him into believing. "They're taking her to a lock-up right now. I didn't want you in there." He wasn't surprised at that admission. It hurt, but it wasn't surprising at all.  
  
He sat there, staring at his hands. It looked like his absolution wasn't nearly within his grasp as he had first thought. Sarah wasn't free, and she never would be.  
  
They all sat there, somewhat comfortable in their silence, until the alarm system started blaring. They were in Area 51. The alarm could have meant anything, from a fire in the engineering room to the chance that the little green men had finally tried to make their escape. But it wasn't any of those things. Not with SG-1's luck. Osiris had found another way out, they all knew it, even Yar'an.  
  
"Alright, kids. Let's go down there and help out." They all stood up, left the room and headed for the stairs.  
  
When they reached the main floor, they could all easily hear the shouts coming from the other side of the stairway door. Daniel went to reach for the knob, only to have Jack pull him back.  
  
"Let me check it first, Daniel."  
  
Not wanting to argue right now, he relented. Daniel moved out of the way for Jack and Teal'c to take either side of the door, guns and zats in each respective hand. Jack made a signal, indicating to Teal'c that he was about to open the door. In mere seconds, Jack threw the door open wide and Teal'c made his way out first, his zat held high, checking to see if any threat was within the vicinity. Teal'c noted that whatever the commotion was, it had headed outside the entrance door, which was twenty feet away from their location in the open spaced hall.  
  
"It is safe, O'Neill." Teal'c said, as he moved his way to the front entrance.  
SG-1 and their companion found their way outside just in time to see Osiris use a hand device on three SFs. Neither Maynard nor Thompson were anywhere to be seen. No one needed to ask why, since they all knew that they would be found in the interrogation room later. The two agents would never have had a chance against Osiris with a hand device. They most likely weren't even the personnel who set off the alarm.  
  
"Now where in the hell did she manage to find one of those?" asked Jack.  
  
"I don't know." He didn't. Daniel was wracking his brain trying to figure out when Sar— Osiris would have managed to find one locked up somewhere in this building. He couldn't figure it out.  
Osiris placed her hands together and out, her palms were facing towards Daniel. He couldn't move though. He knew somehow that this time, she wasn't going to try to hurt him.  
  
"I will have you soon, Daniel Jackson." Osiris had called out as red and yellow sparks of light transported her to a space craft that was so high above, no one looking up could see it.  
  
Daniel didn't try to look up though. He couldn't see anything except the destruction his failure had created before him.


End file.
